Monty Python's Graham Chapman - Looks Like A Brown Trouser Job (2005) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Dr Graham Chapman, MD, delivers in these home movies a set of lectures and demonstrations on how to be funny. Take notes and pay very close attention, because he has it right at every turn. The Pythons were the right mix of personalities and comedic talents. The whole being greater and all that, but in point of fact, were it not for Chapman, it is hard to believe they would ever have coalesced. Inspite of leading the most lascivious of lifestyles, Graham was always the one playing the vicar, the Protestant, the general, Brian, the dowdy women. His window on the ordinary person embraced those characters with a sense of compassion as well as humour, and that's what made it possible for Cleese and Palin to be as off the wall, for Idle to nudge, wink and imply slyly, for Jones to be a perfect foil. It was Chapman, after all, who told Cleese to change his skit about an intransigent appliance salesman to a parrot shopkeeper, and the rest, as they say.... None of them could have pulled off either Arthur or Brian save Chapman. None of them but Chapman could have gotten away with pleading with the German security guards, when they were denied entry to Dachau concentration camp on a German TV project, to let them in because they were Jewish. He had some finger on the essentially dignity of his characters inspite of the prepsoterous silliness, and that touched his colleagues as well as his fans.
In this absolutely terrific and poorly shot film, Chapman holds forth on the college tour cicrcuit about all sorts of misadventures, most of which will thoroughly satisfy you with a great peel of laughter. Knowing how he died, you are aware of the tragic consequences of his carrying on, and perhaps he is as well. Like his skits, in the very peak of the hilarity, something fundamentally frail and human peeks through looking for approval. In the American theatre, I can think of only Red Skelton who could deliver that same sense of silliness and respect, all in an effort to bring you a smile. A brown trouser job? If so, crease mine twice....

Click Here to see more reviews about: Monty Python's Graham Chapman - Looks Like A Brown Trouser Job (2005)

In the early 1980s, Monty Python’s Graham Chapman embarked upon a second career as a public speaker. Throughout the decade he toured hundreds of North American colleges delivering "comedy lectures" which consisted of tales from his life, adventures with an ad hoc group of adrenaline junkies called the Dangerous Sports Club, equally dangerous friends like the Who’s Keith Moon and, of course, his fellow Pythons. In the spring of 1988 he launched his final college tour before his death in 1989, the best of which is presented here, videotaped under Graham’s supervision and taken from his personal archives. It’s a historical – and hysterical - document, capturing Graham at the peak of his comedic powers, at ease and at home before a crowd of Chapmaniacs.

Click here for more information about Monty Python's Graham Chapman - Looks Like A Brown Trouser Job (2005)